Tuesday the fourteenth of June.
That was the afternoon when I came home and my father was alone. He was standing about at the telephone as if he had just used it or was expecting it to ring. Five o'clock, the time when they went for the second report to the police station every day; one of the routines that order our kind of life. I was so drilled and disciplined to it that I even felt anxious they were going to be late. — You haven't been yet?—
— No. — He stood there.
— Has she gone on her own?—
— I haven't seen her.—
— Did she have to go to town? — 'Town' meant the lawyers' chambers.
— I phoned. She's not there.—
— Oh I suppose she'll come in any minute.—
It was his hands that alarmed me. — The car's in the garage.—
I noticed his hands; the thumbs rubbing against the inner surface of the fingers in the unconscious trembling motion of those old men whose nervous system is deteriorating.
— She must've gone out with someone, then. Weren't you here?—
— Ben gave me a lift — there was a meeting, so I left the car for her. He brought me back an hour ago.—
— There must be a note. I'll look in the kitchen. — I've looked.—
We waited for her. The winter cold coming up from the floor and the darkening of the windows to glassy black splintered by streetlights marked the passing of time although he and I avoided being caught, each by the other, looking at a watch. So long as the length of time that had passed was not measured we could believe she would come in soon. — Shouldn't you phone the police station and make some excuse, she's sick or something?—
He looked at me as if what I had just said had the effect of making him recognize what he was avoiding. He held a deep breath. — That's the last thing we ought to do.—
— I can't see why not. They'll withdraw bail if she doesn't report, won't they? We can get a note from Jasood, she was ill.—
— An excuse. it's a sign. It alerts them.—
— To what?—
Father-knows-best. Late, late at night, late in our lives and she's not coming back, he somehow knows she's not coming back — what right does he think he has to keep something from me?
I wanted to yell at him to keep his hands still.
— You know what's happened to her. Where is she? Tell me.—
— I don't know, Will, I'm telling you, I don't know where she is. I just don't know.—
Ah yes. The less you know, the better; that's the way we protect one another, I ought to know that, I'd know that if I were one of them. He was telling me the truth.
We went to bed, he and I. He left the door of their bedroom open and so did I mine, I don't know what for. We lay apart in the dark following imaginary passages of Aila through the night, placing her where she might be — both of us, I'm sure. I fell asleep towards dawn because I'm young but I don't suppose he slept at all.
A young girl came early in the morning. She had purple-pink painted lips and nails and she wore white plastic boots, a smart little garment-factory girl on her way to work. Any neighbourly informers watching the house would have thought her one of the girl-friends of the son, she looked exactly the kind of girl they believe the son of our kind of people would be attracted to. Her long nails and her bangles clicked as she scrabbled for the note in her bag and gave it to my father. In the midst of the strain and tension of those moments there was an incongruous aside, in my feelings; pride in the fact of the unguessed-at commitment of our people to the struggle, hidden under this cheap appearance. Whites don't know what they're seeing when they look at us; at her, at the black women from the country knitting jerseys for sale on the city pavements, at the black combi drivers taking over the streets, the miners in their NUM T-shirts; at my sister, Baby, at Aila, my mother. I want to tell them.
The note was from one of my father's comrades in the leadership. It asked him to come to a certain house. I stayed behind to be home when the police came to look for her. Of course; I was the one who opened the door to them. But she wasn't there. Another time, my mother had gone away and never come back. Now Aila is gone, and she won't come back until everything here is changed, there is air, she will not be judged by the laws white men made for us, she will not live across the veld in a ghetto or be an illegal tenant in a white man's street like this one, where the white neighbours have come out to watch — the women with their arms crossed over their breasts, lips drawn back in salacious expectation, the frowning men with their hands dangling — a police van standing at the gate of this house and the police with their guns and dogs on the stoep.
The leadership thought it best not to involve Sonny in the decision that Aila should estreat bail and leave the country.
There was the chance that once her disappearance was discovered he would be detained again, to be questioned about her. This way, at least he could not be proved to have facilitated his wife's escape.
So she did not need him, even for that.
He told his son it was leadership's decision she should go because the case against her was very serious and in the course of evidence important information about the movement might be revealed. There were infiltrators to the movement involved, who would turn State witnesses under indemnity. Aila had performed her missions commendably, but now her cover was blown. Her name would be honoured, from now on, in the movement inside and outside the country — where she could still be active. Dr Jasood regarded the loss of his money as a contribution to the struggle. When Sonny went with his son Will to thank Aila's old employer, he continued to write some report on a patient while he spoke. — She is worth more than ten thousand rands to us. God bless her.—
There was news of Aila after a while. It came through a third or fourth person, probably someone like she had been, who appeared to be moving innocently between countries. Sonny applied for a passport so that he might have a chance to visit her sometime; see Baby, and his grandchild. But the passport was refused, not unexpectedly, although one of his comrades remarked — Can't see why he shouldn't have a good chance of getting one, now.—
The comment stayed with him long after he was resigned to the disappointment over the passport. It was the echo of common acceptance that the keepers of police files would find he no longer counted as particularly representative of the danger of the movement, to them. It is the enemy — the police, the Ministers of Law and Order and Justice — who decides who the leaders of the people are; it is the measure of the attention, the hounding and harassment you receive, that makes you 'Sonny'. Under the States of Emergency in the country the public gatherings at which his speeches had been so successful were banned. The press, fearful of prosecution and shut-down, took a chance on reporting only the words of leaders so prominent, so well known in the outside world that the government hesitated to act when these leaders defied the law. Sonny a backroom boy, useful for writing statements that appeared or were spoken under the names of the venerable, or for tidying up the vocabulary of the rising stars to give them more weight. Again, as he had done once before, in a moment when old comradeship, the special intimacy of the clandestine life, made it seem possible, he embarrassed others with the direct: Aren't I trusted any more? And there were such denials, such protests — what was he thinking of? What had got into his head?
But were they not thinking — had they not thought, what had got into his head, into his life, deflected him from purpose, the only purpose that mattered at the time when they couldn't do without him — what had got into his head was preoccupation with a woman. There is no place for a second obsession in the life of a revolutionary. But he had never neglected the cause, for her! She was enfolded, one with it, she had connected his manhood, his sexual power as a man, with it! She had given commitment the pumping of the heart. He was overcome with distress at this denial of her (in himself); at this injustice to himself.